This list is my favourite romance novel couples and there is a separate one for my favourite heroes and heroines as individual characters. If I put them in order, I’d never get this list published, so they aren’t.

If you’re uncertain, I suggest leaning towards the couples list for a starting point.

Barring a dark horse in December, I am quite sure this is going to be the best romance I read all year. It’s that good.

Over with my friends in Kissing Book Corner, there’s one book we’ve all been reading and (mostly) heaping praise on. Now it’s my turn to review The Hating Game and I have already added it to the “Classics” section on my Romance Recommendations Quick List. The writing is fantastically witty and fresh, the love story sweet, and I have already pre-ordered Sally Thorne’s next book.

Lucy and Josh work together in similar roles supporting the co-chiefs of a publishing house. They have a hate/hate relationship which evolves into love/hate but is, of course, actually secretly love/love. How they sort that out makes for a wonderful bit of escapism that almost feels like it could be real life, if one could be as funny as the heroine and men really existed who are romance novel constructs.

I keep a lot of lists for recommendations and such, but particularly of pet peeves for historical and contemporary romances. Logically, I know Sally Thorne didn’t read my lists, but apparently we are of one mind on several items: Josh and Lucy have a significant height difference which they acknowledge and that is unusual in and of itself, but they find it tantalizing and work to manage it; Josh’s not insanely wealthy, just financially secure; he’s romantically experienced enough to know what he’s doing, but not a player; moreover, his body’s “astounding masculine architecture” is justified and the product of tremendous effort. There’s just so much going on in The Hating Game that I appreciate as someone who reads many of these books. It’s not just the writing that’s clever, the construction is, too. Thorne follows tropes that work and plays with the ones that need to be put out of their misery.

As a first person narrator, Lucy’s perspective is an absolute riot. Thorne gives her an insouciantly melodramatic voice that had me in stitches:

I begin screaming like an injured monkey.

Of their paintball location: The ground is dusty and stark. The trees ache for death.

…taking my hand and stroking it like an obsessive sorcerer.

In addition to being wry, Lucy comes across as clearly capable and together, while her interior monologue matches so many of ours in that she feels she is a bit awkward and is convinced she’s not managing as well as she is, even as she works to fulfill her ambitions. She and Josh are just so human.

There have been some great romances featuring difficult men (a few this year alone) and there’s always something fun in the successful redemption of a man who would potentially be too irksome in real life, but can be matched to the right woman and the two of them work beautifully together as a team*. This is one of those books. The director Billy Wilder said, “You’re as good as the best thing you ever did,” and The Hating Game guarantees I will be checking out every thing Sally Thorne writes for quite some time.

Venetia was my first Georgette Heyer novel which seems odd given my love of the genre and the author’s lauded status in it. I did try to read it once before, but didn’t get very far. This time, I kept going and was well rewarded for my determination. Venetia,as much as almost any romance I’ve read, is about the heroine’s effort and insistence on choosing her own life. Much of the tension in the novel comes from Venetia saying, “I want this,” repeatedly and dealing with virtually everyone else in her life, including the man she loves, trying to tell her no. She is determined to choose her own freedom.

“So far from being content, she had never imagined that this could be her ultimate destiny. She wanted to see what the rest of the world as like: marriage only interested her as the sole means of escape for a gently born maiden.”

Published in 1958, I wondered if Heyer was writing as much about the women of her own generation who had been given unprecedented independence and responsibility during World War II while the men in their lives were away and then compressed back into their old roles when peacetime returned, as she was about Venetia herself. With deceased parents, an absent and completely disinterested older brother off on The Continent, and a younger brother at home, Venetia has been running her family estate successfully for years. Beautiful, practical, and very bright, she meets the neighbouring estate’s own prodigal son when Lord Dameral returns after many years abroad. Significantly older than her and of leaden reputation, Venetia and her brother become fast friends with Dameral and he is soon a fixture on their lives.

A rake with profligate tendencies, Dameral enjoys his neighbours and is, of course, drawn to the wry and clever Venetia, but feels her social standing could not survive a deeper association. He’s not made of stone. He’s madly in love with her, but they remain friends and settle into that relationship; however, when her absentee brother sends home a shy wife and her harridan of a mother, Venetia’s life is turned upside-down and she is forced to find her own way. The book is largely her story, but Dameral appears regularly to be kindred and delightful. He’s a charming rogue, but a thoughtful and polite one. In him, Venetia sees a future she can embrace even as she knows there may be financial and social challenges. This is her life and her choice to make and she is the one who will make it, damn it!

“Well, my usurper is not very young, and not handsome, and certainly not virtuous: quite the reverse in fact. On the other hand, he is not a bore.”

Precisely and deftly written, just like Venetia herself, the novel felt as though I was reading something that was actually written in 1820 instead of set there. I have a degree in English literature and I mention that at this juncture because I was chagrined to discover that I found the prose style, so witty, so elegant, so historically appropriate, a bit formal and challenging when I started reading; for example, there was one short passage alone contained five new-to-me idioms for intoxication. Clearly, I was able to sort them out and, to my tremendous relief, fall into the flow of the prose, though never quite completely. Since this issue can only be helped by exposure and practice, please let me know which Georgette Heyer novel I should try next. As is often the case, I suspect I have tried a new author starting with her greatest work, but I am certainly willing to give her other books a try.